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Task 2 · Opinion (agree or disagree) · Media

Making corrections as prominent as the story

An agree-or-disagree essay on legally mandated corrections, where the band 9 answer notices that prominence and reach used to be the same thing and no longer are.

The question

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Write about the following topic. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.

News organisations sometimes publish stories that later turn out to be false. Some people believe that the law should require corrections to be given the same prominence as the original story. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

A 250-word discursive essay — the half of the paper that carries two thirds of the marks. This prompt is original, written in the standard format for teaching purposes — it is not taken from any past paper.

What separates the three answers

The 6.5 and 7.5 both argue about where a correction should be printed. The 9 points out that the printed position was only ever a proxy for how many people saw it, and that online the two have come apart.

The three answers

Band 6.5

259 words (the task asks for at least 250)

The answer works. It addresses the task, the reader follows it, and the meaning survives — but ideas stay general, linking is mechanical, wording repeats, and small errors are visible throughout.

The answer

Nowadays, the news organisations sometimes publish the stories which are not true, and later they must correct them. Some people believe that the law should force them to put the correction in the same place like the original story. I think this idea is good, but there are also some difficulties for the news companies.1

Firstly, when a false story is published on the front page, many people read it and they believe it. If the correction is published in a small box in the last page, nobody will see it. So the wrong information stays in the mind of the people.2 This is very bad for the society3, because people take their decisions from the news. For example, if a newspaper writes that a food is dangerous and it is not true, the company can lose all the business, and a small correction can not repair this damage.

Secondly, we should also think about the news organisations. They are publishing hundreds of news every day and mistakes are happening naturally.4 If the law is very strict, they will be afraid to publish the important stories, and this is also bad for the society because the journalists must be free. Moreover, the correction takes the valuable space which can be used for other news.

In conclusion, I agree that the corrections should be more visible than now, because the false news is very bad for the society, but I think the law should not be too strict with the news organisations, otherwise the freedom of press will be effected.

What an examiner notices

  1. 1. Task response

    “I think this idea is good, but there are also some difficulties for the news companies.”

    A position is announced and softened in the same sentence. Nothing later measures the difficulty against the agreement, so 'to what extent' is never answered.

  2. 2. Coherence and cohesion

    “So the wrong information stays in the mind of the people.”

    'So' is the only connector in the essay doing real logical work. Everywhere else the joins are labels applied from outside the argument.

  3. 3. Lexical resource

    “This is very bad for the society”

    'Bad for the society' returns two paragraphs later and 'bad' once more in the conclusion. One evaluative adjective, one wrong article, both repeated.

  4. 4. Grammatical range and accuracy

    “They are publishing hundreds of news every day and mistakes are happening naturally.”

    Habitual facts in the present continuous where the simple present is needed, plus 'news' treated as countable.

One honest caveat

Band labels here describe what each piece of writing demonstrates against the four published assessment areas, paraphrased in plain language. They are teaching illustrations produced for this site, not official material, and no sample has been marked by a test provider. Real scripts are marked whole; two answers with the same label can still look quite different from each other, and nothing on this page can promise anyone a particular result.

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